Creating a button in OpenGL ES

[tmeehan]

I am new to OpenGL but have a need to create custom buttons using OpenGL ES. I've heard reference to people creating all of their buttons this way in order to have greater control as well as reducing the apps footprint by not needing including pngs for all of the buttons. Two questions:

When creating buttons this way, are we actually just creating the image via OpenGL and then using the image in a custom UIButton or is the OpenGL object actually the control itself?

Does anyone know of any sample code to create an iphone button via OpenGL ES?

Thanks in advance for any help or insights.

[Duncan C]

Originally Posted by tmeehan

I am new to OpenGL but have a need to create custom buttons using OpenGL ES. I've heard reference to people creating all of their buttons this way in order to have greater control as well as reducing the apps footprint by not needing including pngs for all of the buttons. Two questions:

When creating buttons this way, are we actually just creating the image via OpenGL and then using the image in a custom UIButton or is the OpenGL object actually the control itself?

Does anyone know of any sample code to create an iphone button via OpenGL ES?

Thanks in advance for any help or insights.

If you're new to OpenGL I would suggest NOT trying to render buttons in OpenGL. If you try to roll your own buttons in OpenGL you will drive yourself crazy trying to get all the subtleties of the UI correct.

Instead I would use a hybrid approach. Create your OpenGL views for the graphics rendering, and then lay UIViews on top that implement the standard UIKit controls from iOS.